The following article telling of the new trend of missionary work in China, was contributed to the CRIMSON by Mr. James M. Yard, executive secretary for China of the Eastern Asia Movement:

China is hungry for better methods. She wants to improve her agriculture and her manufactures.

I have just come across a new kind of missionary report. It is entitled: 1) "Report of Three Years Cotton Improvement Work." 2) "Observations of the Behavior of Cotton Plants." That may sound dry if you do not happen to be a scientist but it does not sound as dry as the little you may .

The report is one of a series from the University of Nanking, a missionary institution supported by several different denominations. The report was written by Professor J. B. Griffing, B. S., formerly cotton expert at the University of Arizona.

Missionaries Now Practical Men

The modern missionary is interested not only in saving the souls of the Chinese but also in improving the conditions under which they live in this world. Poverty is one of the greatest curses in China. If we can improve the cotton crop we can relieve some of that poverty. This man Griffing, out in the wilds of Arizona, would probably never have been influenced by a call to go to China as a preacher, but he was stirred when they asked him to go out to work as a missionary scientist.

He is having an interesting time improving the Chinese cotton, introducing American varieties, hunting down bugs that destroy the crop, finding great unplowed tracts that were laid waste more than fifty years ago by the Taiping Rebellion, making friends with farmers in summer institutes.

One of the great crops of China is silk. There are hundreds of thousands of acres given up to mulberry growing and many million people, men, women and children, are engaged in rearing silkworms and in spinning and weaving silk. The manufacturers in America could use, they tell us, twice as much raw silk as they can now obtain. If, therefore, the silk crop in China can be doubled there is a market already at hand and the wealth of the Chinese farmer can be greatly increased.

Nanking Missionary Tries Sericulture

This missionary University at Nanking has naturally, therefore, undertaken to do something in sericulture. They are at work in a building which was contributed by the Silk Association of America and you may know what sort of missionary work they are engaged in: "The work of the year is chiefly centered around the production of disease-free eggs; grafting last year's transplanted mulberries; transplanting seedlings for grafting next spring; the extension of the mulberry orchard; adding to our already large collection of mulberry varieties both foreign and Chinese; carrying on a large amount of educational work, including a special short course in sericulture; doing extension work with a selected group of farmers near Nanking; and silkworm breeding for purification of varieties and increasing silk yields."

Steward and Griffing are both missionaries and are having fine contacts with Chinese boys, helping them to be decent and manly and are at the same time tackling one of the great problems of China, the improvement of her agriculture and the alleviation of her poverty.